My Final Column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle

I wrote my final column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle this month, marking the beginning of the school year and the end of that publication’s six years of perpetual (and profitable) publication. That final column is about our schools, education, the SAW film franchise, Presidents in Peril, ersatz wales, kids, and the ways we, as communities, show our children our true priorities. I’m pleased with how all of this has turned out, and relieved that we crossed the finish line *before* I succumbed to strep throat, followed by pneumonia, capped with a minor head wound and water heater repair. It’s been a helluva damned month. L’shana Tova, mofos!
My final column starts something like this:

Every day, on the way home from the bus stop, I’d ask what he did that day at school. Invariably they’d done nothing. I’d prod, as directed by the school: “Which specials did you have today? Did you go to the library? Did you have gym? What did you get in trouble for? Did anyone fall out of a chair?” and basically get nothing.
He clearly demonstrated that he was learning things somehow – he was reading ever more voraciously, and suddenly knew perfect squares through 10 and what a rhombus was. If the school accomplished that through long days spent sitting motionless and staring into space, far be it from me to disrupt their zen practice. “Nothing” was, after all, getting results.
But as it turns out, my kid is a damned liar. They hardly did any “nothing” at all at that school.
. . .

. . . and goes on that way. There are more pictures than usual. Check it out: The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In It For The Money: Our Schools
Listen: I did this for you. I don’t know why, but I did.